I’m no lawyer, and so it isn’t too rare that I learn something new about the American system of law and its foundations. Here’s my big learning for today: Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States of America is the presumption of innocence in a court of law specifically guaranteed. It’s merely assumed, out of English common law, to be a right of all people.

Now, thanks to the Military Commissions Act, the presumption of innocence has been replaced with the presumption of guilt. People are now being punished as if they are guilty of a crime without actually having been accused of a crime.

As Jim has pointed out, George W. Bush has now announced that all attempts to obtain information about prisoners in his secret system of torture gulags will be denied. Why? Thanks to the Military Commissions Act, there is no more right to habeas corpus. “Habeas corpus” means, in Latin, “have the body”. It is an order that a prisoner be produced and explained. Habeas corpus is the right of any citizen to be told by the government what people it is holding prisoner, where they are prisoner, and why they’re being held prisoner.

The right of habeas corpus was established before the continent of North America was even discovered. Habeas corpus was one of the legal elements that brought Europe out of the Dark Ages. With the end of habeas corpus rights in the United States under the Military Commissions Act, we have now gone back into a medieval system of law where brute power is the source of government, and our rulers are above the law.

Along with the elimination of habeas corpus rights, the Military Commissions Act sets up a system of insane courts with standards of justice so low that they may be properly be regarded as a rubber stamp for the will of the Bush White House. If the President wants someone to be convicted by these courts, that person will be convicted, regardless of genuine guilt or innocence. These courts are so absurd that a trial is allowed to take place even before an investigation into the alleged crimes has been completed. No kidding - that’s in the law. Have you read it?

Why are these people condemned to go through this mockery of a system of justice? Because they’re terrorists. But how do we know that they’re terrorists? We know, the new system says, because President Bush says they’re terrorists. He and his secret committee have made a royal proclamation that the people are “enemy combatants”, and no one is ever allowed to see the records of the decision that leads to that proclamation. Bush could declare someone an “enemy combatant” just because they didn’t pay their parking fines, or because the person look at him cross-eyed, or because the person isn’t of the right religion. The law gives the President complete authority to make this declaration on any grounds that he sees fit.

That declaration that someone is an “enemy combatant” is a declaration of guilt before someone has been actually convicted of a crime. Catch that? It’s a presumption of guilt - not a presumption of innocence.

Over at Wikipedia, they have a good name for a government that has a legal system that uses a presumption of guilt. Here’s what they say: “In many authoritarian regimes the prosecution case is, in practice, believed by default unless the accused can prove he is innocent, a practice called presumption of guilt.” What’s that they called a government that holds trial with the presumption of guilt? They called it authoritarian. What does “authoritarian” mean? Over at The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, they define authoritarian as “requiring unquestioned obedience to authority, dictatorial”.

Dictatorial. That’s our the new government of the United States of America, for sure. We’re now living under a dictatorship. You may believe that it’s a benevolent dictatorship, that will only use its powers to go after bad guys, but it’s a dictatorship.

The end of the presumption of innocence in America is another sign, like the destruction of habeas corpus, of America going back to ancient, primitive standards of justice. The 1895 case Coffin v. United States resulted in a Supreme Court opinion that cites the presumption of innocence as a legal standard going all the way back to the Roman Empire. So, now that the Military Commissions Act takes away the presumption of innocence, America’s legal system has returned to what, to the standards of the Etruscans?

The passage of the Military Commissions Act is beyond an injustice. It is an assault upon civilization itself.

America, this is your wake up call.